Ottoman Princess

I am so happy to let you all know that a little over two years after the rather distasteful events surrounding the initial exhibition of my installation “Have Your Photograph Taken as an Ottoman Princess” at the Bodrum Castle*, the work’s ‘reincarnation’ as ‘8 Cases’ was exhibited last Sunday at an event organised by the Foça Barış Kadınları (‘Foça Women of Peace’) to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

A lot has happened in between these two ‘one-day-only’ exhibits. First of all, in the aftermath of the castle debacle, the piece found a champion in Sevim İşik, a theatre and documentary film director who has since become a very good friend. Unfortunately, Sevim’s efforts to have the installation exhibited in Istanbul were thwarted by a slide towards authoritarian rule and societal chaos that may be hard for anyone living outside Turkey to get a handle on; moreover, the ‘brick walls’ appeared so suddenly that I began to think that ‘the princesses’ themselves were cursed: First, through Sevim’s efforts, ‘the princesses’ were to be included in an international event at a university in Istanbul; however, a spate of bombings in Turkey led to ‘security measures’ that prevented anyone but students and faculty from entering the campus (hardly my ideal of a ‘public exhibition space’), and then the work was dropped from the program at the very last moment due to ‘funding issues’. Next, Sevim and I approached the staff of a ‘Gender Studies’ program at another Istanbul university, and things looked very hopeful for ‘the princesses’, as we planned an event that would create an intersect between women’s rights and the arts – until another government clamp-down on university ‘activity’ threw a monkey-wrench into the works. In short, it became obvious that a growing climate of fear and repression was not conducive to a public viewing of ‘the princesses’ anytime soon.

So, what happened next? Well, these nine life-size figures spent around a year and a half in our backyard in Bodrum until we moved to Foça last May. It was ‘with great difficulty’ that I managed to convince my husband that ‘the princesses’ were moving with us. At that point, everyone in Turkey was living under a ‘State of Emergency’ that had been declared after an ‘attempted coup’ and then extended at regular intervals thereafter. Tens of thousands of people had lost their jobs and/or went to jail because they were suspected of supporting the ‘coup perpetrators’. What’s worse (yes, there’s worse) is that the events exacerbated the polarization of an already extremely polarized country: Either you believed the president and ruling party’s version of events – i.e. that thousands of people belonging to a terrorist organisation run by an exiled preacher living in the United States had infiltrated all areas of public life and had conspired to overthrow the legitimately elected government in order to install an Iranian-style dictatorial Islamic regime, or you believed, to varying extents, in the theory that the president and ruling party had fabricated a coup in order to seize dictatorial power by instituting military rule, conducting a referendum on regime change, falsifying the results, purging all forms of opposition by throwing thousands of people in jail and/or disenfranchising them economically, and preventing any type of public outcry by implicit or explicit threat that ‘the same thing may happen to you if you don’t watch out’, as they moved Turkey towards an Iranian-style dictatorial Islamic regime.

I suppose it was only natural that in the grand scheme of things, part of me began to feel that pursuing an opportunity to exhibit the princesses – an installation in a public space that tried to champion multiculturalism and increase empathy for those with different socio-political identities, while being critical of the state’s role in perpetuating violence again women – was ridiculously naive and utopian. But then again, the OCD in me was not about to ‘just quit whinging and get on with it’.

Instead, I got in touch with someone I had met briefly on a previous trip to Foça, and during our conversation over a ‘get-to-know-you’ tea, I described the ill-fated adventures of ‘The Ottoman Princess and Her Sisters’. Ahmet suggested I speak to his wife, Filiz Kardam, and a group of women she belonged to known as the ‘Foça Women of Peace’. I ended up becoming part of this group, attending weekly meetings, where we did things like discuss feminist issues while sewing toys for poor and displaced children living in Diyarbakır, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish Southeast.

When it came time to plan an event to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25, we had a surprisingly long discussion about the “Ottoman Princess and Her Sisters”. We spent around two hours going over two main issues, namely, whether or not we should include ‘The Ottoman Princess’ in the exhibit, and whether or not we should include ‘the two extremes’ – i.e., the woman in full, veiled black chador and the woman in a black bustier holding a cocktail glass.

In fact, I was the one that suggested not exhibiting the ‘women in black’, because I felt, given my previous experience with the Bodrum Biennial, that the ‘veiled woman’ might be an unwelcome ‘trigger’ in a town with a similarly ‘staunchly secular’ profile as Bodrum (whereas, as my husband has pointed out, the ‘cocktail glass and bustier’ would be the ‘trigger’ in some other places) and I didn’t want to cause any problems for the Peace Women, and besides, I felt that the exhibition could still speak to the issues of the multiple identities of and the violence directed towards women without the presence of ‘the two extremes’. Ultimately, however, the consensus was to include ‘the women in black’, but not ‘the Ottoman Princess’. As stated by the woman in our group perhaps closest to ‘the secularist profile’ (and bless her heart for reminding me of this), we should not exclude the veiled woman, because “The whole point is to include everyone.”

You may ask, “If the whole point is to include everyone, then why not ‘the Ottoman Princess’?” The reason given was that this figure did not represent a woman who could be found in contemporary Turkish society, and that, in fact, even the word ‘Ottoman’ was a ‘trigger’ – given the ruling AKP’s self-proclaimed ‘neo-Ottoman’ identity and its un-proclaimed attack on the rights of women – and that this would ultimately distract from the message about state-sanctioned violence against women merely because they are women, regardless of ‘what kind of women’ they are. From what I could understand, it was generally felt that the issues that might be raised by the inclusion of ‘the princess’ were on a more artistic/abstract-philosophical level that might not be understood or were beside the point. Perhaps I misunderstood, or perhaps it was I who was unable to explain my intentions/expectations regarding ‘the princess’ (remember, this was a native-English-speaking person with a background in contemporary art conversing in Turkish with a group of Turkish-speaking women without backgrounds in contemporary art).

In fact, in the long saga of the Ottoman Princess, the issue of ‘Ottoman-ness’ has been a much more difficult issue than I had ever imagined. Believe me, it’s not that I wasn’t aware of Neo-Ottomanism as a government policy/identity; it’s that I didn’t realize how the word ‘Ottoman’ alone could conjure up such a visceral antipathy among a certain segment of Turkish society (whereas the blind adulation evoked for another segment I was aware of). It’s as if the discussion of a whole culture and use of an identifying adjective and proper noun have become entirely off limits.

In sum, the journey of the Ottoman Princess has taught me two things:

Lesson No. 1.: That one figure was really loaded with meaning! Without it, the exhibit presents 8 ‘types’ of women (paired by attire, with one ‘covered’ and one ‘uncovered’ woman per pair – with certain intentional variations in the type of head coverings worn) and refers to eight examples of eight legal cases in Turkey in which the concept of ‘unjust provocation’ was used to reduce the sentences of men who murdered their wives. It addresses the issue of how women are subjected to violence solely because they are women, and because of society’s view, reinforced by the state via the legal system, that men should have power over women. It also points out that there are many different types of women’s identities, none of which either incline or prevent women from becoming victims of violence, and it invites people to ‘try out’ all of these different identities for themselves. But with just that one extra ‘princess’ figure, the exhibit, in my mind at least, addresses the more complex concept of identity-formation itself, particularly in terms of how women are perceived and not only how these perceptions are created, but also how they create expectations regarding women’s roles and behaviour in society. Without that one figure, the piece doesn’t raise the question of what it means to be a ‘princess’, or why I, as a woman, am supposed to want to be one.

Lesson No. 2.: We here in Turkey are at the point where we are ready to publicly address the issue of violence against women. However, we are not quite ready to address the much messier issue of identity.

And now for some good news:

I sat outside the municipality’s cultural centre on the afternoon that the ‘8 Cases’ were exhibited, and I am happy to say that they attracted quite a bit of attention – which, the aim was to raise awareness, is a good thing. True, for about three-quarters of the people who interacted with the figures, they were just a good diversion, a bit of entertainment for a Sunday afternoon. However, I’d say that the remaining one-quarter were more deeply affected by trying on an identity and then reading that it was the identity of a woman who had been murdered by her husband – who was later excused, in part, for his behaviour – murder – on the grounds that his wife had dared to exercise her own will. I’d also say from the expressions on the faces of the people who read the information that they were not aware of these court decisions – and that they were not okay with them.

A number of businesses in Foça, as well as the gentleman in charge of the cultural centre, were enough appreciative of the piece that they agreed to keep the ‘8 Cases’ on view for a little while longer. Six cases will be in the centre of Foça (two at the cultural centre, two at a design shop, two at a cafe), one in the village of Kozbeyli and one in the village of Bağarası); I’ll get y’all a map by next week, just in case you’re in the neighbourhood…

*Immediately before the opening of the 2015 Bodrum Biennial, I was ‘requested’ to remove the installation ‘Have Your Photograph Taken as an Ottoman Princess’ from the Bodrum Castle on whose grounds the work was being displayed. If not, I was told, the entire Biennial might be closed down. According to the women responsible for the organisation and the female bureaucrats at the castle , either (there were two different stories) my name had somehow not been included in the exhibition list sent to the Ministry of Culture in Ankara, or that the Ministry had not been aware that the installation included text describing court cases in which judges reduced sentences of men convicted of murdering their wives because the women’s ‘assertive behaviour’ – e.g. asking for a divorce, wearing pants – was considered ‘unjust provocation’. Either way, they blamed ‘Ankara’ for the removal. Given that I was later informed by the ‘responsible bureaucrat in Ankara’ that ‘he had no idea what I was talking about’ and that ‘Ankara gave permission for the group exhibition, and any other decisions are made by the local museum’ – which is in line with what I was told by a long-term museum employee – and given the fact that in removing the figures in the exhibit, the museum personnel took special care to ensure that no one could see the female figure veiled and covered in black from head to toe by an Islamic ‘chador’, I suspected that the women involved found that figure personally offensive and did not want to see such a representation of ‘that type of woman’ in Turkey, and/or they were worried that ‘the modern women of Bodrum’ might complain about it, so they ‘made up a good story’ to make sure that didn’t happen. I have suggested this version of events to all of the women involved in the removal of the piece, and none of them has denied that, in fact, this was the case. I have provided this detailed explanation because it pains me to know that women are many still unable to put their differences aside and work together in spite of them.

This beautiful work by an art student in New York and my wish to share it with you has finally put an end to my procrastination.

After the hectic energy and motion involved in getting together my most recent bit of installation art, “Have Your Photograph Taken as an Ottoman Princess”; followed by total paralysis in response to the piece’s sudden removal from the Bodrum Biennial under mysterious and rather disturbing circumstances; and a gradual thaw that involved slow travels along the Mediterranean coast and fast times with friends and family in New York, which, gratefully, brought me back to myself… well, let’s just say, things are back to normal – if you can call editing a magazine, writing a grant proposal and cooking a Turkey – all at the same time – normal.

A propos this posting, the grant proposal had to do with a project for a workshop on ‘community arts’ here in Bodrum. That idea was prompted by the experience of putting together the ‘Ottoman Princess’ exhibit – and then having it taken down. As a piece designed to raise awareness about violence against women – all kinds of women – and the Turkish legal system’s tacit acceptance of this violence through court decisions that reduce the sentences of the perpetrators (usually husbands/ex-husbands and boyfriends/ex-boyfriends), I thought I would have the support of women in realizing this exhibition. In fact, I had a lot of women – as well as men – support the piece financially, but finding a woman’s advocacy group willing to contribute to the content of the piece was difficult. Moreover, it eventually became clear to me that the decision to remove the piece was due to a combination of fear and mistrust – by women!

Luckily, however, there have been a few women (you know who you are) who have given me the encouragement to try and find another place to exhibit the work and, just as important, if not more important, to continue doing work that keeps me in the world rather than just in my studio, and to encourage others to do the same.

Reading up on ‘community arts’ confirmed my belief that there are two things that art is really good for. The first is self-expression, and the second is community expression. A lot of times, the second type of expression comes more in the form of ‘expression about community’ than ‘self-expression by members of the community’, but when you manage to get both of those things together, well, there you’ve really got aesthetics in the original sense of the word, which had as much to do with moral satisfaction as it did with sensual satisfaction.

Back to where this post started out: the clay sculptures created by students in the Forensic Sculpture Workshop, a class offered through the New York Academy of Arts’ Continuing Education program, are reconstructed facsimiles of unidentified crime victims that “capture the likenesses of unknown citizens who faced cruel and untimely deaths from a variety of gruesome circumstances” created by students and displayed in the university’s windows in the “hopes that someone walking by the university windows will see a face and recognize it.” As the program’s director explained to the Huffington Post, the program is “the perfect marriage of art and science. Having students use art and their extensive knowledge of anatomy for a bigger purpose and real world application to help the community at large was an opportunity worth waiting for and one we hope to replicate for years to come.”

I find poetic the fact that the ‘community’ being represented here is a community that, up until these art students became involved, had lacked representation in the literal as well as the figurative sense of the word.

And I’m impressed that this all took place in a continuing education program. Presumably, all the students in the class could have chosen to take a sculpture class that would have allowed them the opportunity to focus more on their own self-expression, but instead they chose to focus on the expression of someone else.

Have you had a chance to see my piece “Have Your Photograph Taken as an Ottoman Princess” on exhibit at the Bodrum Castle as part of the 2nd International Bodrum Biennial? Well, you won’t any time soon – despite the fact that my name is still on the list of participating artists on the biennial website and has been on the blog of the exhibit since way back at the beginning of July.

The pictures above are from the “Princesses” very first hours at the castle – and also their very last.

Whether or not their removal was a matter of censorship or just a bureaucratic fuckup is still unclear; however, eventually I intend to get to the bottom of this…

These are the 9 sketches that are being transformed into life-sized models as we speak (well, ok, it’s 8 o’clock on a Saturday night, so there is probably no one at Show Reklam working at this very moment – but Monday afternoon I’m supposed to go and check them out, so I guess it’s fair to say that they are almost ready. Inşallah.)

If you’ve been following the project so far, then you know that the original ‘Ottoman Princess’ in this installation was designed based on an Orientalist engraving from the 19th century. We had a little group discussion regarding how to ‘dress up’ the version in this installation, and based on that discussion, she ended up looking like this:

I particularly like her ruby necklace and her turquiose shalvar. She’s in the same pose as the first engraving I had picked to use as a sketch, but I like her better because she looks to me ‘more realistic’. Just what that means is a bit confusing, because, in fact, she’s a totally made-up character.

But then all identities are ‘made-up’, aren’t they?

This is one of the things that I wanted to point out with this installation.

In fact, one of the most difficult things was making up only eight identities; I had to set a limit somewhere, due to space as well as costs, and 8 seemed like a good number. The idea was to have four of the women wearing a head covering and the other four not. But there are so many reasons why women may ‘cover themselves’ – and so many ways of doing it, from a traditional village headscarf (that you don’t need to be a Muslim woman to wear)

to full ‘black chador’ – an extreme form of dress for a woman – and something that is not all that common in Turkey – but not all that uncommon, either.

That extreme form of religious dress is something that a lot of ‘secular’ Muslim women get pretty upset about; the worst fear: that someone (or some government) will force me to do this.

At the opposite extreme, there’s definitely a prejudice that equates an ‘uncovered’ woman as a whore – and that doesn’t make distinctions; in other words, dress like this:

or like this:

or like this:

or like this:

and you are immoral.

From the pictures, I think you will be able to make the judgement that all these uncovered women are different types – or, better, have different identities; in fact, the same woman may adopt a different ‘persona’ – i.e. ‘identity’ – on a different occasion (opening party? office work? shopping and a movie? a hike in the woods?) that is reflected in what she wears.

The possibiliities are endless; for the installation ‘Have Your Photograph Taken as an Ottoman Princess’, I just tried to pair up ‘covered’ and ‘uncovered’ versions from ‘casual’ to ‘extreme’. This is what I ended up with: all the women above, plus two more:

and

And while none of these women are ‘really real’, they are all ‘sort of real’ – or, better ‘could be real’ – they could be on the streets of Bodrum or Ankara or Nevşehir – all places where I’ve lived, and where I’ve seen ‘women like them’.

In just about 2 weeks, it’ll be time to try out these women in public at the Bodrum Castle as pat of the Bodrum Biennial – to give other women (and men, and girls, and boys) the chance to see what they would look like ‘as’ these women.

Of course, just trying on someone else’s clothes (so to speak) doesn’t mean you know what it’s like to ‘be’ them (not to mention that it would be pretty hard to know what it’s like to be someone who isn’t real).

Still… the possibility to see yourself differently – or see someone else differently…

More on the process behind my latest installation, “Have Your Photograph Taken as an Ottoman Princess” (with more background below in my previous posts.

Most of ‘the Princesses’ are now beyond the sketching stage, getting onto the watercolor stage, and a few of them are on the computer already, getting ready to be blown up to life-size.

For that, I was down at the sign shop last week to go over the process, trying to find the best way to blow them up to get the look that I want. Unfortunately, it is not a straightforward process (would that it were!). The ‘Princess’ I’ve named ‘Sunglasses’ (for file-finding purposes) has been the one I’ve been using for try-outs:

Zeynep at the sign shop was skeptical about the size of the ‘face opening’, but after she tried it out she agreed that it was not ‘too small’ as she had feared.

Zeynep also thinks the image is fine the way it is, but I think it is a little too ‘cartoony’, when I was really going for ’19th-century engraving’- so that’s going to change.

But more interesting than the printing has been the response to people trying on ‘the princess mask’. Two things stood out there:

I was over a friend’s house, and her gardener was one of the people there who tried on the mask. Next thing I know, I get an email from my friend that has her gardener’s son’s email address, and could I please send the photo to him? Her gardener, who, I am guessing, is not a regular art-gallery patron, is looking forward to visiting the Bodrum Biennial so he can see ‘what this is all about’. (I call that a ‘positive outcome’, and the exhibit doesn’t even start for another month!)

I was over at the Bodrum Castle to figure out exactly where the installation needs to go (based on, among other considerations, things like where do the tourist groups congregate and where is the ground not ancient paving stone). While I was there, I was introduced to a family, and my friend asked them if anyone wanted to try on the ‘princess mask’. Out of 8 people, the first one to want to try on the mask was the oldest child – who happened to be a boy. His father promptly said that this was ‘not for him’, that it was for his sister. I promptly corrected that: I said the ‘princess’ was not a real person, and that anyone – male or female – could try out ‘being the princess’. For proof, I showed them the following:

(Preparations for the installation “Have Your Photograph Taken as an Ottoman Princess”)

So, the goal was to have a bunch of different ‘types’ of women to represent the range of women that you might see on any day on any given street anywhere in Turkey. In fact, you probably wouldn’t see all of them on the same street at the same time, but you might; I’ve seen all these ‘types’ myself, so I know.

Let’s be clear here: There’s a difference between ‘archetype’ and ‘stereotype’. I really started to notice that when I began working on the sketches in more detail, and felt that there was a certain direction I should be going in – more accurately, that there was a certain direction I shouldn’t be going in. The only difference between ‘archetype’ and ‘stereotype’ might be that an archetype has no negative connotations and a stereotype does. I certainly don’t want to be a stereotype. The problem is how to tell one from the other. I wanted make sure that each ‘princess’ was a different type without being a stereotype, but how? And why?

I’ll open up these 2 topics in a minute, but first, to quickly address the issues of ‘why “princess”?‘ and ‘why “Ottoman” Princess?’:

The ‘Princess’ (and certainly not the Turkish ‘prenses’) in ‘Ottoman Princess’ does not refer to a member of a royal family, it refers to ‘what we call little girls’. It suggests a lot of things, and I hope here it evokes two opposite ideas: first, the idea of being ‘special and privileged’ and second, the idea of being ‘frail and in need of protection’. In either case, the ‘princess’ is NOT real. And it’s important to realize that ALL THE PRINCESSES ARE BASED ON REAL WOMEN, BUT NONE OF THEM ARE REAL WOMEN.

The ‘Ottoman’ (‘Osmanlı’- from the ‘Royal House of Osman’) in ‘Ottoman Princess’ is not connected with any contemporary sociopolitical effort to distinguish between ‘Ottomans’ and ‘Turks’. The idea to use the image of a 19th-century ‘Ottoman’ woman along with 21st-century ‘Turkish’ women came from the fact that the original engravings of Ottoman women were NOT images of REAL women: they were images of a Western fantasy of Eastern women; in other words, they were filled with ‘ideas’ about ‘others’: They were saying (in a visual language), ‘THIS WOMAN IS SOMEONE WHO I AM NOT.’

So, now that that’s out there, back to the questions of why I want to present images of ‘not-stereotypes’ and how I am going to do it.

Why: because (as the 19th-century Western male artists and publishers of ‘Ottoman Princesses’ probably knew), it’s easy to dismiss someone who is ‘other’ (read: inferior, mistaken). It is less easy to step into their shoes (or in the case of my installation, into their clothes) and try to see what it is that you have in common with them, try to understand them. I think that is important, but I don’t think it’s easy; heck, I don’t understand all the princesses, and I’m the one making them!

Interestingly, the PROCESS of making them is helping me to understand them. I wonder if this is what a novel-writer goes through when s/he invents a character. I am sitting with these sketches on my work table, and I am trying to understand, ‘WHO IS THIS WOMAN?’

One princess seems to ‘want’ to have her hair coiffed up (Trying to impress someone? Or forced into a social role?), another has short hair (Easier to handle? Oh, my god, is she a lesbian with a buzz cut??), a couple of princesses have cell phones in their hands (at the moment; I’m still not sure if this ubiquitous 21st-century is going to be replaced with something else), and one has got a garden tool and some kind of vegetable (at least she will; or maybe she’ll be holding some weeds. I can’t decide yet).

Interestingly, the easiest woman for me to draw has been the one who is covered in black from head to toe. It’s easier for me, because I don’t have to decide what she’s got on underneath; I don’t need to know if she’s wearing high heels or sneakers (or high-heeled sneakers), a high-buttoned blouse or a sleeveless t-shirt… In short, she’s the ‘princess’ I least understand. She’s also the one I LEAST want to be. I must admit, I am having a hard time feeling any empathy for her. I don’ particularly like her – which is strange to say, because I’ve already admitted that I don’t really know her. If I don’t know her, how can I say I don’t like her?

And there in a nutshell is what this is about.

(I’ll be posting more on this project here. If you’re interested, be sure to “follow’ this blog. You can also “follow” the Ottoman Princess blog to see what happens after the exhibit opens (‘more to come’), and sign up to the Ottoman Princess facebook page for all types of related information (which you can add to as well).

Update: My latest installation – “Have Your Photograph Taken as an Ottoman Princess” – will be included in the upcoming Bodrum Biennial opening on 12 September.

In addition to information about the project (in Turkish and English), the Ottoman Princess blog will post news about violence against women in general (unfortunately there is a lot of that) as well as artwork addressing the issue. (Since there appears to be more bad news than good news, I would particularly welcome contributions of good news from anyone who has any. The best way to pass on this news is by joining the Ottoman Princess facebook page (in Turkish and English) and posting there, and I’ll repost to the blog.)

People who visit the exhibition and have their photos taken as an Ottoman Princess will also be able to post them on the facebook page, and I’ll repost to the blog, so that they’ll form a running exhibition catalog.

Finally… Since I try to give a high priority to ‘demystifying’ what it is that artists do, I’ll try to post ongoing information about the process of putting together the exhibition. For the background information on the exhibition, you can go to the Indiegogo Ottoman Princess page. The project is already funded (thanks to all who donated), but the site will be up through the 15th of August, which is the official end of the fundraising campaign, and it has the most detailed information to date.

I’ll be posting here on this blog, so please ‘follow’ if you want to get the updates on the proect, and then I’ll either be linking or reposting to the Ottoman Princess (have to get the ‘technical details’ worked out on that).

I think the blues have won.
No, I don’t mean I’m sad: I mean the feedback from Facebook about which image would make the best Ottoman Princess was leaning to the lady above. (In the final version, I’ll incorporate some yellow and red into the scarf around her waist, and the style will be more like the red-and-yellow version that was the second choice.)

That’s going to wait a bit, though, because of the rather less thrilling and too time-consuming task of getting ready for ‘the arrival of the princess(es)’ – in other words, getting the last details re: the costs of getting 9 figures produced for my installation at the Bodrum Bienial this fall – and more imporantly, getting the project on the Indiegogo web site for funding. (Look for ‘Ottoman Princess.)

The piece is something I designed several years ago in response to a particularly heinous court decision that took jail time off the sentence of a man convicted of murdering his wife; apparently, she had ‘provoked’ him by going into town dressed in jeans.

All the details of the project will be on the Indiegogo web site, and I’ll have more details here as well – hopefully by next Wednesday (July 15).

In the meantime, I’ll just leave you with images of 2 of the ‘perks’ I’m giving away to people who contribute to the project. (They are both printed invitations from former exhibitions of mine – not ‘original’ art – although there will be some of that, too – but I thnk they’ll look rather nice framed (if I do say so myself), and they’ll be’signed by the artist’ – that’s moi.

Above, a detail from a mixed-media piece that was exhibited at the Ankara Museum of Painting and Sculpture (and now owned by a very nice couple from southern France),

Below, a detali from another mixed-media piece that was exhibited at the Soyut Gallery in Ankara (and if I remember correctly, it is now in the gallery’s ‘collection’)